


Keep it All the Year

by mnemosyne



Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-03
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-12-07 10:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemosyne/pseuds/mnemosyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen wakes in a world that is not quite his. For (lj user) rain_sleet_snow's Secret Santa 2011, using the following prompts - "Stephen/Sarah, <br/>It’s a quarter after one and I’m all alone and I need you now, <br/>A break from the ARC, or having to spend Christmas or a holiday that’s important to them in and around the ARC, just an awareness of how the ARC affects their lives and maybe their families, even when they aren’t there."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep it All the Year

_When Stephen wakes, sucking cold air into aching lungs, he cannot see. There is a brilliant, overwhelming light and he closes his eyes against its intensity. From what feels like a million miles away, he feels a cool hand linking fingers with his own and someone, some woman, talking in low tones. For a brief moment, pain shoots through his body, tearing into every limb, and the hand tightens, the voice becomes louder, and behind his eyelids he can see the light burn brighter than it had before._

_And then it is over; Stephen opens his eyes again and there is only the faint glow of a fire lighting the room. He can smell cinnamon and chocolate, feel soft velvets against his skin, and there is an energy rippling through his body that he has not known in months._

_“So you’re the famous Stephen Hart,” comes a voice, and he sits up, tangling legs in the woollen blanket that has been covering him. Across the room sits a young woman tucked up on a wooden chair, long fingers closed around a cracked mug. She regards him, head tilted, like he is a butterfly she has just pinned to a board. He frowns._

_“This isn’t Heaven, is it?” he asks. She grins and shakes her head. His eyes widen, but she unfurls herself, holding out a placating hand towards him._

_“And relax, it isn’t Hell either. Or Devachan, or Mictlan, or Valhalla or the Elysian Fields. You are not walking the shores of the River Lethe.”_

_“No,” Stephen agrees. “I’m sitting in my boxers in a strange woman’s living room.”_

_“It isn’t my living room,” she replies, “it’s just a place we’re stopping to relax for a bit. You were terribly injured.”_

_“I was dead, wasn’t I?”_

_The woman purses her lips. “A bit.”_

_“A bit?”_

_“Well… have you ever seen_ The Princess Bride _?”_

_“No.”_

_She hisses through her teeth. “Well, it’s a little nothing like that.”_ _The woman steps over to him and peers intently into his eyes. “At any rate, you’re not dead.”_

_“How happy should I be about that?”_

_The woman shrugged, turning aside to fuss with something at his side. “Would you like a hot chocolate? I’m a bit of an expert. I’m Sarah.”_

_She bustles away and Stephen sinks back down onto the sofa. Steadily, he folds the blankets he has been wrapped in, and places it to one side. There are a set of clothes folded neatly on the side, his clothes, he thinks. As Sarah clatters in the next room, Stephen pulls them on, a soft grey t-shirt and a faded pair of black jeans. Something falls behind the sofa, making a loud clunking noise, but he does not pick it up._

_When Sarah returns, she presses a cup of cream and chocolate into his hands and sits across from him, wriggling her bare toes underneath his thigh. He raises an eyebrow and she shrugs._

_They sit there together for a while in silence, sipping the rich chocolate and not looking at each other._

_“It’s Christmas, you know,” Sarah says after a while. “I’ve never been alone at Christmas before.”_

_“You’re not alone now,” Stephen points out. Sarah’s toes wiggle a little. “Who are you, Sarah?”_

_“Actually would you believe I’m an Egyptologist. “_

_The most surprising thing about Sarah’s story is that it doesn’t surprise him, not really. As she talks, Stephen leans backwards and lets her voice carry him. He can see them all vividly in her words and a pang of longing runs through him._

_She tells him about Jenny, and Stephen pictures her tall, regal; she talks of Abby and Connor and he cannot help but smile. After a very long time, she tells him about Nick and his throat constricts. The chocolate hangs thickly on his tongue and he does not know if he can breathe._

_“How come he isn’t here?” he asks, turning his face towards her for the first time in an hour. She shakes her head._

_“This isn’t the afterlife,” she tells him, “I told you that. This is time rewritten.”_

_“Then we’ll rewrite it again.”_

_“Do you think it’s as simple as all that?”_

_“Yes.”_

_Sarah is quiet for a moment, places her mug carefully on the floor._

_“What would you unwrite to write him back?” she asks._

***

**Christmas 1999**

Snow glittered on the ground, and Stephen could not remember seeing anything more beautiful in his entire life. He sat, cross legged on the bench, huffing clouds into the still winter night. It was getting late, and he had been sitting here for almost an hour. Every limb ached, but he remained still, watching the stars coming out for the evening.

“I thought I told you to have a merry Christmas.” The familiar voice of his professor sounded in Stephen’s ear and he looked up at him with half a grin.

“I thought I’d get out before they made me play Charades,” he said. “I’m not sure I could live with seeing my grandmother try and act out  _The Full Monty_  again.”

Cutter laughed quietly, though his smile did not touch his eyes. “What are you doing here, Stephen?” he asked.

“I knew you’d be down here,” the younger man admitted. “I thought you might like the company.”

He stood, hefting a small rucksack on his shoulder. Cutter looked smaller these days, he thought, had lost something of the energy that used to ripple through him. The professor was holding a small bouquet of flowers in his hand.

“I don’t know what I expected to do with these,” he said at Stephen’s quizzical look. “They’re her favourite, but…”

“But you put flowers on graves.”

The professor nodded sadly. “It’s Christmas,” he said. “I had to do something.”

Stephen held out his hand and Cutter placed the ragged bouquet into it. His eyes were red-rimmed, Stephen noticed, and his fingers shaking, pinched white with cold. Aching loss rolled off him in waves, a tsunami of barely repressed emotion that threatened to engulf whoever came too close.

“No gloves?”

Cutter stared at him for a moment, then shook his head.

“Let me get you home, Nick,” Stephen said gently. He took the older man’s arm, leaving the small posy propped against a fence post. “Have you even eaten today?”

Later, at Cutter’s home, Stephen unpacked carefully wrapped leftovers of turkey, roast potatoes and parsnips, stirred gravy in a plastic jug, chattered nonsense about the gifts he received and pretended not to notice the number of times Nick’s glass was refilled. It was long past midnight when Nick turned to him, clinked a glass of whisky against Stephen’s beer bottle.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas.”

Stephen just laughed and shook his head. “This is what I’m here for,” he said.

The smile Nick smiled then had not been seen by anyone for more than a year.

“Thank you,” he said again. Stephen did not tell him that this was everything he had been waiting to see.

***

_“You can’t go around unmaking people.” Sarah says, “Believe me, I’ve resolved to go back a hundred times, a thousand times, and every time I think about what we’ve left behind. They’ve found happiness without us, just as they had with us.”_

_“Don’t you think that they’d be ecstatic to see you back?”_

_“Until Connor gets shot trying to save me, or I drag Jenny down the wrong corridor, or Becker takes the left side instead of the right and something grabs him unawares.” Sarah grimaced. “This really isn’t a choice we should make.”_

_“It’s a choice we have to make,” Stephen points out gently. He holds out one hand and after half a heartbeat, Sarah takes it, running her thin fingers over his knuckles._

_“We’re not gods,” he says. “What responsibility do we have to the world?”_

_“Did Nick ever talk to you about a woman named Claudia Brown?” Sarah asks suddenly. There is a wariness in her voice, as if she is afraid of what Stephen will do. He nods._

_“I thought he was mad for the longest time,” he admits. “It doesn’t seem so strange now.” He thinks about Jenny and her fear and frustration about a woman who never existed. How many Claudias, he wonders, have he and Sarah created even by sitting here, he wonders. In his mind’s eye, a thousand timelines open and close like flowers blooming and he looks back at Sarah._

_“If you stopped it before it was started,” she says quietly, “what would become of me? I might never have known any of this.”_

_There is a breath of something unsaid, then Sarah speaks again, not looking at him. “Be patient, dear Hart. I do have a plan.”_

*******

**Christmas 2010**

Lester stood, hands on hips, glaring into the middle distance. Below, on the main floor of the ARC, Sarah bumped Becker’s hip gently. “Do you think he’s angry?”

“I’m angry,” said Becker, rolling his eyes. “I imagine Lester’s somewhere the other side of Alpha Centuri on that scale.”

“Do you know,” Lester announced to the gathered team. “Do you know, I don’t even care. Just go fix it. I will be in my office. Lorraine, bring me the files we were looking at on Friday, we might as well get something useful done.”

The door slammed behind him.

Sarah pursed her lips. “That went better than expected,” she said, turning towards the outer doors. Becker hefted a gun on his shoulder and lifted an eyebrow at her. “Admittedly I did expect to be a little smoking pile of charcoal on the floor,” she allowed. “Like we aren’t all working on Christmas Day. I was having a very nice time with-”

“He had the kids,” Becker said in a quiet voice. “Didn’t you know?”

_Jenny would have known_ , she thought then. “No,” she said. “I didn’t. I suppose that is worse than cancelling a romantic dinner.”

“Let’s get through this and I’ll buy you a romantic beer and pizza,” Becker said. “Come on.”

It had been three hours before they finished, before they had rounded up the last chilotherium (“Can’t we just call them dinorhinos?” “You’re an idiot.”) and made their way somewhat more bloodied, muddied, and bruised and grumpy back to the ARC. As the team walked through the doors, Sarah combed her fingers through her hair, making a face at the mud that fell in wet clumps; Becker stepped delicately to one side to avoid it. Sarah resisted the temptation to shake herself, dog-like, over him.

“Oh!” From somewhere in front of them, one of Becker’s team gasped, her sharp intake of breath turning rapidly into a full-throated giggle.

“Oh indeed,” Becker said, stopping. The team fanned out behind them, staring. Despite the dirt, Sarah could not stop herself from hugging the nearest soldier to her.

In the centre of the hall, a table had been set up, laid out with red and green, tinsel, holly, plates of food  - not turkey, perhaps, but plates of fish and chips piled high. From somewhere, through every speaker, the quiet strains of  _Silent Night_  were playing. To one side stood Lester, who was carefully pouring himself a glass of champagne.

“ _Please_ go get cleaned up first,” he said. His voice was weary, but his eyes soft. “We’ll try and salvage something at least.”

When the clock chimed midnight, Sarah kissed Lester warmly beneath the mistletoe, chaste friendship and deep affection, and hoped that he could feel something of the love and regard of his team.

*******

_The anomaly glitters open, just as he remembers, in the corner of the room. He leaps to his feet, tense and on guard, but Sarah’s hand is on his arm._

_“I didn’t think it would happen,” she says, her voice full of wonder. For the first time, Stephen notices the inkstains on her hands, the papers scattered everywhere across the room, the walls filled with lines and charts and looping swirls, connecting tiny scrawls of data. The young woman wipes her hand across her eyes, steps forwards just slightly. He sighs, smiles, and realises there is a question that he hasn’t yet asked, in all the hours they have been speaking._

_“Did you bring me here?” he asks. Sarah grins, nods, eyes gleaming.  
  
“I looked for the pattern for a long time,” she says, “Cutter started me off, without him I-” she trails off, voice catching, and Stephen can see that her shoulders are shaking. He steps up behind her, wraps his arms around her and pulls her back, close into his chest._  _"He spoke of you so often, I had to try. For Cutter."_

_“Do you know what’s behind there?” he whispers, lips brushing the tip of her ear. She nods slowly and her voice is trembling when she replies._

_“That, Stephen, is the future.”_

_“Whose future?”_

_Sarah turns to look up him with a broad smile._

_“Ours,” she says, and he can feel the breath of that syllable hopeful on his cheek._

*******

**Christmas 2021**

The landscape was barren outside, she could not remember the last time she had seen snow. Very carefully, Sarah bolted the door, eyes watchful on the outside. It was getting dark now, but then it always seemed to be dark these days.

A sharp metallic scent hung heavily on the air, and she coughed, shaking her head. Footsteps sounded behind her and a child’s arms wrapped themselves around her waist, a slingshot dangling from one wrist. Sarah looked down smiling.

“What do you want, pup?” she asked. The child looked up at her with wide, mischievous eyes.

“Dad sent me to fetch you for dinner,” he told her. “And said that if you were at the books again I had to pick you up and carry you in.”

“I’d like to see you try, puppy.” She bared her teeth at him and the child ran back up the hallway, chittering with laughter. Sarah followed him with her eyes, to the small glow coming from the far door. The sound of voices carried to her, a familiar harmony now. Slowly, she padded towards the room.

“Hurry up, lazybones” Stephen’s drawl sounded through the door and Sarah jumped backwards to catch a pair of candles tossed towards her.  She pulled a face at him, waving them in a vaguely threatening manner. “We’re all getting hungry.”

“Especially me,” piped up Connor from one side of the table; already seated, his son sat on his knee, shooting small rubber balls at any target standing close enough until his mother confiscated the tiny weapon.

“I really wish you hadn’t given him that,  _Hilary_ ,” she grumbled. Becker looked back at her with toothy smiled innocence.

Stephen pulled a chair from the table, and Sarah sank into it gratefully, leaning forwards to light the candles from the ones already lit. His hands closed over hers as she placed them carefully in in the holders.

“Do you feel it?” he whispered into her ear.

For a moment, the noise in the room stilled, the metallic smells of iron and blood that always seemed to pervade the air dissipated beneath a remembrance, cinnamon and chocolate and  _Stephen_. Timelines danced in her eyes, and she nodded, wordlessly.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered. Sarah smiled, reaching to cup his face.

_Merry Christmas_.


End file.
